Author's Note: I've been a Trekkie for a long time. That doesn't mean I didn't really like Star Wars. I loved Han Solo from the first film. But I never thought I'd write Star Wars fanfiction. So I may not have all the jargon down. I've got Wookieepedia for resarch but could use help. I'd also very much like a co-author to write the forthcoming action scenes. It's not my strong suit. Though I've writtem a few now and then.
I consider this a therapy story. When they killed Doyle on Angel in the 9th episode, I needed a therapy story. So I wrote one. When Call of Duty Ghosts ended on a massive cliffhanger with no hope of a sequel, I wrote one for therapy's sake. In both cases, it helped. I'd just decided Tech was my favorite character as I watched Faster. And then the finale happened. Ouch. I need therapy. So here's my therapy story, no matter how Season 3 turns out. This is going to help me get by, and maybe it will help you.
Star Wars: The Bad Batch
In Secret
by Gabrielle Lawson
Prologue
Tech took a moment to breathe. The pain in his shoulder made it difficult to think, but he forced himself to focus anyway. His first plan had been that he'd die to save his squad. And he was at peace with it. But it was a long, long way down, and he had time to think of a second plan, not that he required a long time. He knew that to survive such a fall, he'd have to slow his velocity, perhaps put something between himself and the ground, and even possibly aim for trees. He changed his body position to face the ground far below, arms and legs spread. This slowed his velocity. He unclipped the line from his belt and turned toward the remains of the railcar that was falling. He pulled his arms and legs in, which sped him toward the wreckage. He caught the structure and managed to get to the top of it. Once there, he looked for trees. There were many very tall trees closing fast. If he timed it right, he could jump or perhaps grapple to them and further slow his fall.
The grapple had worked. At first. But the thin limbs at the tops of the trees broke when he tried to pull himself to them. So he jumped. Those thin limbs broke at his approach, but he'd banked on that. They would slow his fall gradually as the limbs below became stronger. And they had. Eventually they arrested his fall completely. And painfully.
He was face down on a bed of intertwined branches. Intertwined with other branches and his body. His left elbow was wrenched high behind him, and the force of the fall had pulled his shoulder nearly out of the socket. That was the greatest source of pain. The branches that fell away as they broke under his weight had also ripped at any outer surface. So his armor was all scratched up, as were all the spaces between the plates of armor. Which meant he was scratched up. But all told, he was alive and that was something.
He carefully flipped the screen down on his helmet, but it was cracked and split diagonally. It couldn't tell him the distance to the ground. Not that he could climb down if his shoulder dislocated, though he absolutely hoped to give it a try once he got his arm unstuck. He slipped his helmet off, held it over a gap in the branches about a half meter to his right, and dropped it, counting the seconds until he heard it clatter on the ground. It wasn't a thunk. It clattered. That meant rocks. And it took far too long to hit them.
Alright, he thought. One problem at a time. His comm was on his left hip. So he couldn't call for the others. He had to get his arm loose. He tried rolling to the right, hoping to raise the left side of his body enough to try and work his arm free. But the branches had their own ideas. He realized too late that his focus had been lacking, and that, by turning, he'd changed his weight distribution on the branches. The branches beneath him snapped and he fell again. While his left arm did oblige to come with him, he'd felt the pop when it slipped out of its socket. The branches became bigger and stronger, and that would stop one part of his body only for another to keep falling. Even in the armor, it knocked the wind out of him. The twigs and needles scratched at his face. He lost all control as he was thrown this way and that as he continued downward. He tried to cover his face, but the branches ripped at his arms as he involuntarily flailed on his way down. He closed his eyes and hoped for the best as his whole body began to vie for painful attention.
And for one brief moment, there were no branches, no twigs, no needles. But there were rocks. He hit them on his back and rolled downward. He scrunched his eyes tightly when his head hit a sharp one and the lenses of his goggles cracked and splintered. His vision was blurry after that, but there wasn't much point to watching anyway. He tried again to shield his head with his right arm, but the rocks flipped him and rolled him until he finally skidded to a stop, face down in the gravel-strewn grass. He took in one gasp of breath and coughed out blood, then everything went black and he felt no more.
"Team One, report," the lieutenant ordered. He was standing in the now ruined command center, working with a portable communications set.
"We pursued the insurgents from the wrecked railcar, four individuals. They escaped on a modified Omicron shuttle."
The lieutenant signed in exasperation. "Team Two?"
"We have located the wrecked railcar. No survivors, no bodies." There was a pause. "Wait, TK-4644 has found something. A helmet. Clone trooper but nonstandard, highly specialized."
"Find the clone that lost it."
Dr. Hemlock had been observing quietly in the back of the command center once the summit was ended and the blast doors lifted. A homing beacon had been found in the wreckage of his transport. The explosions had saved the secrecy of his lab and work at Mount Tantiss. He replayed, in his mind, Team Two's report. Clone trooper helmet, nonstandard, highly specialized. Clone Force 99 had nonstandard helmets. Perhaps they'd traced him here to find their lost companion.
He returned to the hangar now and ordered the troopers of the last remaining shuttle to get him down to where Team Two had found the helmet.
By the time they'd helped him walk up the steep, rocky terrain, Team Two had found the owner of the helmet. And it was alive. Hemlock smirked. It was jsut as he'd hoped. He carried with him an emergency medpac from the shuttle. He pushed the troopers away and knelt beside the prone clone. It was lying unconscious, face down, and its breaths were wheezy. Hemlock was actually impressed it wasn't dead already. He carefully turned the body over, which wrenched its left arm behind and under his body in an unnatural position. Dislocation. The broken goggles on its face gave away its identity. Hemlock had passed the time during his trip here by learning more about Crosshair's 'brothers.' This was CT-9902, "Tech." Tech was the brains of the outfit. Enhanced intelligence and analytical reasoning, outstanding skill with technology of any kind. That could be ever so useful in the right context.
He tugged the arm out from under the body and opened his kit. He ran a scanner over the body. Critical condition. Skull fracture was troubling. There was a small branch or stick protruding from the right side of the body, and the scan confirmed it had managed to find a way between the armor plates and the ribs to puncture a lung. Also troubling. The brain needed a living body. This one was going to need help to stay living. Other injuries included various limb fractures, internal bleeding, and a severely crimped spinal column. If it weren't about to die, it would likely be paralyzed from the waist down.
He removed the ruined goggles and placed a breather over its nose and mouth. He cut away the armor and cast it aside as he ordered two soldiers back to the shuttle for a stretcher and blanket. He ordered two more to collect the armor and the helmet.
The leader of Team Two approached. "Governor Tarkin wants to know if it can be questioned."
"Negative," Hemlock replied. "The clone is unconscious and barely alive. I will take it to my lab and get what I can from it before it expires. And tell Tarkin there were two groups of insurgents. Clone Force 99 wouldn't have planted a beacon on my ship only to blow it up. They wanted to track me to my lab. They didn't set the bombs."
He returned his attention to the clone. He cut the underclothing away as well and sprayed the body's core and head with bacta spray. The two troopers returned with the stretcher. Hemlock handed the bacta sprayer to the next closest soldier. "Spray its back when I turn it." Then Hemlock carefully turned the body onto its ruined left shoulder. The soldier sprayed. Hemlock nodded to the stretcher, and it was placed beneath the body before Hemlock lowered it. He reached into his kit once more. He started a fluid injector and attached it to a large vein in the body's right arm. That done, he covered the body with an antishock blanket up to its neck then strapped it down to the stretcher.
He stood. The troopers lifted the stretcher, and they started their difficult walk back to the shuttle with Hemlock's new prize. If he managed to keep this clone alive, he could potentially advance his cloning research exponentially. He'd read up on all the members of Clone Force 99. One of them was a 'reg,' a nonmutant clone. CC-1409, "Echo," had been made a mutant by the Techno Union on Skako Minor. They'd hooked his brain up to their computer defense network and kept the clone armies at bay, until Clone Force 99's irregular tactics, along with Jedi tricks, recovered him. Well, if the Techno Union could manage that with a 'reg,' Hemlock reckoned he could do better with a genetically-enhanced brain like Tech's.
He ordered the shuttle's navigation be set to Mount Tantiss as he worked to keep Tech alive.
Footnote: Tech's thoughts on how he might survive were inspired by the YouTube channel, Because Science. The episode in question is "How to Fall from ANY HEIGHT and Survive." Also, I've heard of incredible stories of skydivers surviving falls when their chutes failed. One was an instructor taking a first-timer on a tandem jump. The parachutes failed and they were spinning. He couldn't get to his knife due to the centrifugal force. His jumper couldn't either. So he turned them so he would hit the ground first. His jumper survived. She was on her feet within days. He also survived, though he has very serious life-long injuries. He saved her life.